About MiddMedia

MiddMedia is a audio/video storage and streaming service hosted by the college. It is developed and supported by LIS with the goal of providing high quality video streaming for both academic and administrative needs.

MiddMedia is not a video browsing and search service. To share a video with others you must embed it in a website visible to your intended audience. This website might be a Middlebury Drupal page, a Moodle site, a WordPress blog, a MediaWiki wiki, or another site on campus or elsewhere on the internet. See below for instructions on embedding audio and video.

MiddMedia

Video quality is not restricted when uploading in original quality, DVD-quality is possible

Video length is not restricted, only total storage-space usage (which is 500MB by default, see above).

Local network location means that high quality videos can be streamed instantly around campus.

Videos can be of any aspect ratio (such as tall and narrow)

Supports MP3 audio

Video uploads are private, access control is totally dependent on where you embed the video (if anywhere).

Download links are available for all audio and video.

Upload and insertion plugins are available for Segue and WordPress.

Cons

Extra steps needed to embed video in another system or email download links in order to share videos with others.

No simple tally of content views.

Using MiddMedia

The MiddMedia service can be accessed by going to http://middmedia.middlebury.edu/. After you log in you will shown your personal directory and any shared directories to which you can upload audio or video media.

Uploading media to MiddMedia

Audio and video files can be uploaded to MiddMedia from the MiddMedia site or from Segue or WordPress. If you plan to upload many media files or large media files, it is recommended that you upload these in MiddMedia first and then access from the WordPress or Segue Media Library. When uploading large media files, keep in the mind the following:

Large files may need to be uploaded one at a time using the non-Flash upload form

The maximum size file that can be uploaded to MiddMedia is 1.5 GB. If a file is larger than 1.5 GB, split it into smaller files before uploading to MiddMedia.

For the highest quality video, convert your video files to MPEG-4 video with H.264 encoding before uploading to MiddMedia and choose "original" quality when uploading.

It takes time for the videos to encode so be prepared for the encoding process to take a number of hours for a large video.

MiddMedia has a single queue. There may be other videos in the queue ahead of yours. Even if your video file is small, it could take a number of hours to encode other videos in the queue before yours is encoded.

You do not need to monitor the encoding process. You can log out/close the page and the server will encode in the background.

If you want to see the status of your video file you can refresh the page. After refresh you will see what place you are in the queue, or how long your video has been encoding.

Scroll down until you see the line for the MiddMedia plugin and click Activate.

Note: We recommend that you Deactivate the MiddTube Video Plugin if you previously had it enabled. All of your videos will continue to work, provided you've enabled the MiddMedia plugin. We will eventually phase out support for the MiddTube Video Plugin.

Access the MiddMedia dialog

Begin editing the post or page. Place the cursor in the content area where you would like the media to appear.

Click the Add Media starburst in the upper-right corner of the editing window.

Click the MiddMedia tab in the frame that opens.

Uploading Media

In the Upload Media section, select the Directory from the drop down dialog you will upload to.

Click the Browse button and locate the media to upload on your computer.

Click the Upload File button.

Note: Your file is first uploaded to the Wordpress server, which then uploads the file to the MiddMedia server. For large files, this process can take a long time since we're uploading it twice! If you're uploading a large video file or many files, we recommend using the MiddMedia service directly.

Including Media in your Posts and Pages

In the Insert Media section, select the Directory from the drop down dialog you want to view files from.

Click Show Files

Click the Use button to the left of the file you want to include in your content.

This will add a line to your post or page resembling "[middmedia username directory filename.ext]". When the post is displayed to someone reading your blog, the Wordpress server will use this information to contact the MiddMedia server and fetch the video information. You can edit this information manually if you like, or delete the line from your post to remove the video.

Deleting Media from MiddMedia

In the Insert Media section, select the Directory from the drop down dialog you want to view files from.

Click Show Files

Click the Delete button to the left of the file you want to delete.

Click the Yes button in the confirmation message that is now displayed.

Using audio/video from MiddMedia in MediaWiki

Audio and video can be embedded in MediaWiki pages for wikis that have the 'MiddMedia' plugin installed. See the Special:Version page for your wiki to determine if the 'MiddMedia' plugin is installed.

If using the WYSIWYG editor, click the 'Wikitext' button to go into text-mode.

Type in a custom tag where you want the video to go. Replace the dir and file values with those for your video as seen in your MiddMedia listing.<middmedia height="160px" width="300px" dir="afranco" file="MIDDLEBURY KICKOFF.mp4"/>

Embedding Audio/Video

Audio and video can be embeded in static web pages as well as in many blogging systems. Please be aware that some systems do not allow users to insert embed code for security reasons and will strip it out when you attempt to save your content.

If you wish to allow users to download your audio/video file rather than play it directly in a web-page, MiddMedia provides you with a download link.

Go to MiddMedia and log in.

Find the audio/video you wish to use

Click on the Embed Code & URLs link

Copy the HTTP URL link from the second text-field.

Paste the link into your web page or email.

You can also click on the “Click here to view and/or download this file.” link to access download links for each of the formats the file is available in.

Permalinks

Media files in MiddMedia are now accessible via permalinks for display and downloading. Now you can link directly to a page served by MiddMedia that displays the media and download links to all versions of the media.

You can find a link to this page if you click “Embed Code & URLs” next to any video you are browsing in MiddMedia and click on the “Click here to view and/or download this file.”. Alternately you can construct this URL like this “http://middmedia.middlebury.edu/middmedia/view/dir/[the directory where the file is located]/file/[the name of the file with its extension]"

Supported Formats

The supported audio and video formats are described below. If you need additional support creating audio/video files of the proper format, please contact the Digital Media Tutors in the Wilson Media Lab.

Video

MiddMedia natively supports Flash video (.flv) and MPEG-4 video with H.264 encoding (.mp4). Other video formats are supported for upload to MiddMedia, but will automatically be converted to MPEG-4 video with H.264, possibly resulting in quality loss. MPEG-4 video with H.264 encoding provides the best quality and is the preferred format.

Natively Supported formats

The following video formats will not have any conversion applied to them when they are uploaded to MiddMedia, retaining their full resolution if original quality is selected:

MPEG-4 video with H.264 encoding (.mp4)

Other Supported formats

The following video formats will be automatically converted to MPEG-4 video with H.264 encoding and WebM after they are uploaded to MiddMedia.

Choose a filename (default extension is mp4) and file location, and click OK to start rendering.

Optimal Encoding Mpeg Streamclip

mp4:h264

{quality=0.25

or data rate=512 kb/s}

dimension=640X480

Audio

MP3 audio is the only audio format supported by MiddMedia. Other audio formats are not currently supported and can not be uploaded to MiddMedia.

Permissions

Permission to work with specific folders in MiddMedia is determined by membership in the appropriate group. The group's manager can adjust membership as needed. To find out who manages a group, log on to http://login.middlebury.edu/groups then click the "Web Groups" tab.